I'm back. Did you miss me? I'm making this thread about everything organic to answer anyone's questions on how to do anything organic. I read through a bunch of threads in this section and I'm seeing a lot of misinformation.

Mix and cook in a tote or trash can for 4 weeks ( all soil mixes must be cooked). Cooking is basically fermenting the soil. Allowing everything to be broken down by microbes so everything is readily available for uptake when the plant wants. If you don't cook your soil you will be running into deficiencies early on.

If you use a more amended mix with any bone meals (fish or cattle) you will have a much hotter soil and could burn your plants. With bone meals ( fish or cow) you should cook the soil for 2 months minimum for them to break down fully.

Green sand and dolomite lime are both useless as they take up to 2 years to break down. Dolomite lime has the wrong ratio of cal and mag. You want more of a 5:1 cal:mag ratio with liming. Oyster shell flour or gypsum rock dust is a better option. Dolomite lime is a 2:1 ratio

Never use perlite. It floats to the top of the soil ( not aerating the rest) and over time it breaks down into a powder and clogs the soil.

Rice hulls are better for a mulch as the break down pretty quick. Worms love them

2nd round plant new clone or seedling off to the side of the main stalk.. The main stalk from the last grow will break down eventually. Top with worm castings and water

Also add red wigglers and night crawlers to your pots or sips

Use mulch or cover crops.

Pot size 15 gallons minimum. 25 is better. If you run octo pot style sips you can get away with 10 gal pots

Another question I hear a lot is do you want more fungi dominated soil or bacteria dominated soil?

Well you want both, balanced. Root exudates attract bacteria and bacteria attracta fungi. The fungi feed on some bacteria and regulate nutrient uptake.

Another questionI hear a lot is about using mycorrhizae. What to buy or use. You can purchase freeze dried mycorrhizae like great white. The trichoderma in there will outcompete the other bacteria and fungi. If you use cover crops they will naturally facilitate mycorrhizae from the air. The root exudates from short root plants / grass will attract mycos

I'm back. Did you miss me? I'm making this thread about everything organic to answer anyone's questions on how to do anything organic. I read through a bunch of threads in this section and I'm seeing a lot of misinformation.

Cover crops / companion crops.. same thing right?
I bought oregano, chamomile, and cilantro seeds.
What do you think about these?

I didn't watch your fermentation video but I've been reading up on the bokashi bucket where i'd throw my food scraps in there and get a shot of fermented juice every few days. Is that the same thing? When do you use these shots to water plants?

Also for cooking soil, can I cook it in the 15 gallon fabric pot I'm going to plant in? I've accidentally mixed it up in the fabric pot already and it's sitting in my garage. My recipe is a little different:

@hyroot welcome back! Your knowledge is much appreciated. Love the soil mix, mine is pretty much the same. I started using botanical teas this past year with great success (yarrow, chamomile, comfrey, nettle, horsetail, and valerian). I like letting the herbs sit for 3-7 days strain dilute and feed. Sometimes i mix the herbs up, sometimes i do them individually. I was just wondering if your process is similar or different. Any tips or words of wisdom?

Cover crops / companion crops.. same thing right?
I bought oregano, chamomile, and cilantro seeds.
What do you think about these?

I didn't watch your fermentation video but I've been reading up on the bokashi bucket where i'd throw my food scraps in there and get a shot of fermented juice every few days. Is that the same thing? When do you use these shots to water plants?

Also for cooking soil, can I cook it in the 15 gallon fabric pot I'm going to plant in? I've accidentally mixed it up in the fabric pot already and it's sitting in my garage. My recipe is a little different:

@hyroot welcome back! Your knowledge is much appreciated. Love the soil mix, mine is pretty much the same. I started using botanical teas this past year with great success (yarrow, chamomile, comfrey, nettle, horsetail, and valerian). I like letting the herbs sit for 3-7 days strain dilute and feed. Sometimes i mix the herbs up, sometimes i do them individually. I was just wondering if your process is similar or different. Any tips or words of wisdom?

Peace!

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I do ferments. I used to do even amounts of brown sugar and organic material and ferment for a couple weeks. That's the knf method. The sugars trap the microbes and make them go dormant not allowing them to multiply.

Adding water to ferments allows the microbes to multiply. Also makes it easier for cannabis to uptake.

So now I follow more of the Jadam / Gil recipes. But KNF is a good place to start and get a base of knowledge from.

I fill a bucket 1/3 of the way with organic material.
Add 1 pint of activated labs and fill up the rest of the bucket with RO water
Ferment for 3 weeks, Then open and stir, Then ferment for 1 more week.
Then remove 1 pint of solution and add 1 pint of RO water. then use. Roughly 1 tbsp per gallon.

FPE
Flower power- bananas, papaya, pumpkins.
Veg power - plants only fermet one type of plant at a time. I ferment mainly aloe and comfrey separately for veg ferments.

I have a recipe for fermenting citrus to make a pest spray foliar. I will post that tomorrow.

Also make sure to use a sealed container with an air lock. If exposed to outside air while fementing, that can invite harmful pathogens and possibly cause fusarium to develop in the soil.. Make sure it's sealed and use an airlock to allow the co2 to escape

Root exudates feed bacteria and fungi and in this way promote their population growth.
Depending on the nutrients the plant needs at every moment of its life, the exudates it produces will be composed differently and thus cause different groups of microbes to proliferate, mine whatever is their favorite food more intensely, and store the nutrients in their little bodies.
This in itself will not feed the plant. There need to be predator species that will eat the bacteria and fungi, and excrete excess nutrients in that desired plant available form, just at the right time.

Lots of exciting things are being discovered regarding the fungi, but they do not regulate the uptake of nutrients for the plant, the plant does that.
I don't know in how far this also applies to saprophytes (fungi who sustain themselves from the mineral and organic matter of the soil vs being hosted by a plant as mycos are), but Jeff Loewenfels describes in Teaming with Fungi how it has been found that at the fungal tip, up to 40% of the fungal DNA is actually bacterial in nature (what they do with that, is yet to be ascertained )
In other reasearch it has been found that fungi secrete their own exudates to culture bacteria that will assist them enzymatically with their digestion processes. So the fungi have their own little flock of helpers to get their job done.
As far as is known so far! haha
Knowledge in this area is being gained in leaps as we write

Hey Hyroot! Good to see you back, and commendable, your initiative to start this thread
Seeing one of your goals is accuracy, I hope you don't mind my saying a few words about the microbes:

This is, simply, not correct.

Root exudates feed bacteria and fungi and in this way promote their population growth.
Depending on the nutrients the plant needs at every moment of its life, the exudates it produces will be composed differently and thus cause different groups of microbes to proliferate, mine whatever is their favorite food more intensely, and store the nutrients in their little bodies.
This in itself will not feed the plant. There need to be predator species that will eat the bacteria and fungi, and excrete excess nutrients in that desired plant available form, just at the right time.

Lots of exciting things are being discovered regarding the fungi, but they do not regulate the uptake of nutrients for the plant, the plant does that.
I don't know in how far this also applies to saprophytes (fungi who sustain themselves from the mineral and organic matter of the soil vs being hosted by a plant as mycos are), but Jeff Loewenfels describes in Teaming with Fungi how it has been found that at the fungal tip, up to 40% of the fungal DNA is actually bacterial in nature (what they do with that, is yet to be ascertained )
In other reasearch it has been found that fungi secrete their own exudates to culture bacteria that will assist them enzymatically with their digestion processes. So the fungi have their own little flock of helpers to get their job done.
As far as is known so far! haha
Knowledge in this area is being gained in leaps as we write

Cheers!

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Actually I am correct

From the first chapter of Teaming With Microbes

Yes bacteria feed on root exudates. Those carb sugars they feed on is what attracts them to the rhizosphere

Protozoa are eukaryotic species of fungi

I have all 3 books in the series. Teaming With Microbes, Teaming With Nutrients, and Teaming With Fungi

Oh. I'm so sorry you're going to make a "who's right" thing out if it.
I was hoping for dialogue, which is so desperately needed in the face of the many many mysteries we have to manage in practice.

The texts you posted actually reflect what I was saying.
What you wrote however does NOT correspond to the text. At least I found no passage in there (or anywhere else to date for that matter, in my studies specifically on the soil food web over the past year) that says anything close to what you are maintaining.

No.
Bacteria and fungi do have interactions and relationships (as I was pointing out by a few examples), but what makes the nutrient cycling spin is when the microbes from the higher trophic levels come and eat the bacteria and fungi. It's expressly said so in the first paragraph of Teaming with Microbes page you so kindly posted.

You may have read the books, but I'm not sure you understood.
And since you seem to be totally closed to revision, I can only wish you good luck.
Too bad you're now going to perpetuate exactly what you set out to remediate with your thread: misinformation.
Cheers

Oh. I'm so sorry you're going to make a "who's right" thing out if it.
I was hoping for dialogue, which is so desperately needed in the face of the many many mysteries we have to manage in practice.

The texts you posted actually reflect what I was saying.
What you wrote however does NOT correspond to the text. At least I found no passage in there (or anywhere else to date for that matter, in my studies specifically on the soil food web over the past year) that says anything close to what you are maintaining.

No.
Protozoa, now increasingly denominated as protists, are NOT fungi.

No.
Bacteria and fungi do have interactions and relationships (as I was pointing out by a few examples), but what makes the nutrient cycling spin is when the microbes from the higher trophic levels come and eat the bacteria and fungi. It's expressly said so in the first paragraph of Teaming with Microbes page you so kindly posted.

You may have read the books, but I'm not sure you understood.
And since you seem to be totally closed to revision, I can only wish you good luck.
Too bad you're now going to perpetuate exactly what you set out to remediate with your thread: misinformation.
Cheers

Click to expand...

You started off telling me I was wrong. Clearly I wasn't. You set out to be the one upper know it all who doesn't know. I can show more examples. Just seems you forgot early reading. The first and 2nd paragraph in the first pic both say root exudates attract bacteria and fungi... bacteria elude protozoa